Re: [ga] CCtlds
Dear Danny, You rise a key issue. I will go through them at the end of your post. Sorry if it is long. This is the core of the Internet issue. At 16:23 06/10/2006, Danny Younger wrote: Jefsey, You point out the issue properly here. The demands of the Multilingual Internet reveal that the current ICANN/IETF proposition is unable to cope with the extent of the world's expectations (but this does not necessarily mean that they are outdated, just incomplete). Your question is then, who can replace them. To address that basic problem, let's go back to the basics. The end to end interoperable Internet protocols (IETF/ICANN) use Telecom plug to plug interconnection protocols (ITU) in order to support users' brain to brain interintelligibility protocols, which can either be universal (as is for the telephone: on/off, numbers, rings) or human languages. There are multiple ITU protocols (radio, lines, satellites, etc.). The Internet is unified through IP (this makes it the [IETF] network of the [ITU] networks). You see here that I did not list a structure for languages just yet (one is currently being created). Languages are diverse. You can address them with four different strategies: - universalization: this means in being transparent to languages. on/off, figures, voice, tones, etc. - lingualization: a unique language is being used. The Internet is built on IP and English, with one DNS, one IP addressing plan. This is why one can talk of the "mono-Internet". It works perfectly well when everyone speaks English and fully accepts the 1983 architecture. - globalization: you use the language above to support the various language families, just as you use TCP/IP to support HTTP, SMTP, FTP, etc. In order to do this, you internationalise (for example you support Unicode) the network to be foreign language transparent, and you localise the connected ends. This is what the IETF does with IDNA and the langtags. This is the Internationalised IETF Internet. - multilingualization: you localise globalization. This means that you are able to support every language the same way that you support English. These are the [language] networks within the [IETF]) network of [ITU] networks. This is a "multi-Internet", which ICANN requested the IETF to investigate in its ICP-3 document at the DNS plane. However, there are many other brain to brain/CPU protocols: they are the interapplication protocols (where specific information has specific syntax and semantics). These protocols are the essence of our "relate together" brainware system. XML is a system to build the simple ones of the semantic web. The digital ecosystem began as different hardware-oriented infrastructural technologies. The software based Datacom solutions enabled the construction of a superstructural time/resource sharing of this Telecom infrastructure: this is the Internet. Today, we have entered the Metacom area that you see everywhere with the semantic web, EDI, the metadata, etc. of the metastrucural relations. In these three levels, there is a need for a go-between, which is the DNS (tell me where the machine is, the virtual machine, and today, the metamachine/system). The IGF, ICANN/IETF, and ITU are in this maelstrom. There multilingualisation is (a) a top priority for the IGF, a confused issue for ICANN, a confusing word of the IAB (RFC 4690), neutral to ITU, (b) just the first step back from the "network of networks" to the "networks of the network of networks" that we deployed thirty years ago, but this time at three magnitudes larger (billions of users when we had millions). Therefore, the best for all of them, and us, is most probably: - to identifiy what we do best and to cooperate together. This at least implies: - not to develop non-interoperable solutions that can block others, - and to understand how the new world intergovernance works and is to be built. Tunis has actually identified that the Mono-Legacy-Internationalised IETF Internetting application for the digital ecosystem was better off being managed as it is today (NTIA statements, Congress decision, etc.) and that the metanetting was to be explored in common at the IGF. The IETF seems to have chosen to stay at the same level. IAB has no inputs so far from its community to go further toward an "Internet of the Future". GENI is still in a documentation limbo. MINC can help at some stage. The ISO and ITU are the only ones that seem to clearly want to take on the challenge. Partly due to their experience and methods that you quote, partly because of their own members (countries and operators) whose problems go beyond what the ICANN/IETF proposition delivers. We had the Multilingual Internet ITU/UNESCO conference. We have the SG17 query that you quote. However, - this is not the existing ITU-T. It can certainly help (as they proposed ICANN a few years ago) in hosting, methods, etc. But this is a new ITU-I sector to develop. SG17 will be a part of the bootstrap, but others should also join. - this is not the existing ISO. But some extension of the JTC1/SG32 and EDI, together with Dublin Core, etc. and a drastic cultural evolution from globalization and hierarchical (centralised/decentralised) networking to multilingualisation and distributed networking. ISO 3166 makes a major step ahead in acknowledging local administrative languages. - this is not the existing MINC. After having initiated the concept (Dr. Tan Tin Wee), they started fighting fragmentation in documenting the various lingual zones. Their current evolution should help establish better relations between ICANN/ITU and the grassroots field process. - this is not the prepared IGF. The most important result of the WSIS, in which the American people did not really appreciate, being opposed to the UN proposition so often, is that the entire world accepted that global decisions and policies were no longer made by sole governments, but rather through a common governance by subsidiarity that also equally involves civil society, economy, and international structures. This is a civilisation change. However, they still missed the point that the human virtuality (our common cultural understanding of the reality) has changed dramatically by way of human population size, industry, computers and the Internet. Most of what people consider as their day to day environment is composed of (man-made/conceived/operated) artefacts, while until recently, it was mostly made of facts (from reality and face to face relations). This means that what counts for a decision (what the people think - rather than the way things are) is increasingly technically made. Now, the IGF must find a way to understand that a country, community, and corporation increasingly are virtual, and that the root decisions which actually decide of them are made at the technical level. This is true for the Internet, but is also true for energy, water, food, etc. In this evolution, ML.ML names are a priority for multilingualisation. The IETF has delivered a conceptually bugged IDNA proposition and would like to block multilingualisation to the benefit of the e-status-quo (English inside), in the hope that ICANN will fix the bug by way of contracts. This misconception results and is related to a lack of R&D, which is now quite entirely delegated to Unicode, however without formal MoU. The problem was documented by the IAB in RFC 3869: R&D has a cost. If it is only paid by commercial interests, the results will be commercially biased. Governments did not respond. Non-profit answers like mine have hard times with commercial interests. There seems to be a progressive trend to address this: to join Google, may be in the hope that Google is larger enough to better share common interests. IMHO this is a risky move for four main reasons: - Google has correctly understood that users do not want solutions: they want services (service providers want solutions), but a single corporation cannot embody the interests of the world's diversity. - Google can share the interests of a limited diversity (like the US interests) but the ROI of the cultural diversity is too long-term and too wide to be a target for a private coporation. - there is no credible competition to boost Google for the time being and Google's economic model is too subject to legal opposition and hacker protection by confusion (privacy). Therefore, the day Google goes down, the world too would go down with it. - we face a Copernican revolution. The cost of R&D can be dramatically reduced if we consider the proper architecture that we need (distributed user-centric) instead of the one we have (decentralised network centric). As usual in the Internet, there is a grassroots process that is developing (ex. China, keywords, etc. or the NATs for the addressing) to correct the problem. However, the delays, technical blocking, and lack of architectural ideas and advancement are amassing. The solution IMHO is the Multilingual Internet. This is not so much a multilingual solution, as it is the result of the current mono-Internet vision not being able to deliver it. The first positive contribution of the Multilingual Internet is either a brand new Internet (which is not an easy task) or to permit a separate development in uncoupling the various levels. The Internationalised solutions are options in the current IETF/ICANN culture. Multilingalisation will, as a necessity, consider the IETF/ICANN culture (and governance) as an option among separate interoperable developments. China and others have already commenced this. In Athens, we will see where we are (probably not very far, but most probably well engaged). Once we start understanding how the Multi-Internet will be accepted and deployed, and the kind of evolution from the Mono/Legacy Internet that we must follow, we will then be able to better discuss its technical architecture, deployment, and governance. We will be able to structure the necessary polylogue between civil society (@large, Noncoms), the economy (IPC, stakeholders), governments (GAC), international institutions (ITU), as well as the technical side (IETF if it evolves, and/or MLTF). This might engage an evolution of ICANN from the International management of a US network to the management of the global interests of the US network. All the best, jfc |